Originally published at: New Jersey school district restricted access to topics including the Holocaust and civil rights, say teachers | Boing Boing
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If someone wrote a movie script where the villains had those surnames it would be rejected as too silly and cartoonish.
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It’s just a damned shame that good god fearing xtians have to be constantly on guard because of truth and reality. All they want to do is shove their fantasy.down the throats of any number of the rest of the world and woke people are up in arms about it. I suppose that true believers are gonna have to kill a bunch of these godless freaks to show them god’s love for almost everyone. Why can’t we live and let lie?
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Middletown isn’t all that far from Lakewood, which is about 30 miles further south on the Garden State Parkway. Lakewood is probably one of the largest Jewish majority cities in the US. It has a population of about 140,000 and about 2/3 of the population is Jewish, most of them Orthodox. I say this to say that Jewish people are not uncommon in that part of New Jersey, and while Middletown’s schools likely do not have a large number of Jewish students, they almost certainly have some, and all of their students probably know someone who is Jewish, or they interact with Jewish people regularly, which makes this decision baffling and unconscionable. We cannot start ignoring the uncomfortable parts of our history just because they make us feel bad, and we need to make sure our children know this history. That doesn’t mean you show 7 year olds graphic images of Holocaust victims, but it also doesn’t mean you don’t tell them it happened.
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Election day next Tuesday in the US. Get your sample ballots, look these people and issues up, and go vote if you haven’t yet. If you are in a place where that work is too much, reach out to someone who aligns with your views and ask if they would share their choices.
But vote. Because it all matters. School boards of education often have elections with razor thin margins. Your vote will count. Your vote could be the reason why a queer student in your community is safe at school that year.
Go vote
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Seriously. “Jacky Tobacky”.
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In Virginia, the entire state legislature is up for election. I cannot overstate how vital it is to get to the polls and cast your ballot. There are a lot of voter suppression tactics being deployed by the fascists. Make sure your vote counts. Vote out every damned Republican, in every damned office, in every damned election. Enough bullshit.
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His nickname was “Wacky”?
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Well… I’m a Jewish resident of Middletown. While your points seem rational on paper, they’re actually not correct, sadly. There’s a huge undercurrent of antisemitism in this town, and save for one section (Middletown is huge, and has discrete neighborhoods,) judaism is all but unknown here.
To wit - when exchanging hard currency for goods at a local store, recently, the gentleman was unabashed in his statement to me - “here’s your jew change.”
Fwiw, you’re correct on one point - quite a few surrounding areas have large Jewish populations.
Middletown is a bizarre Red enclave in blue NJ - had we known this, never would have moved here, and it didn’t occur to us to even think about it. It feels like the deep south, with NJ accents. “fjb” stickers abound on pickups here (mind you, this is a part of town where most houses are well north of 7 figures.)
Local govt is filled with disgusting Maga types.
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Fair enough. I live in Ocean County, about 30 miles south of Lakewood. I know a number of Jewish people, and it’s not at all uncommon to see Hasidic (I’m assuming Hasidic, but I’m not educated enough to know for sure) Jewish people in stores like Costco. I assumed it would be similar the same distance north.
Middletown is not a bizarre red enclave in blue NJ, sadly. North Jersey is a blue enclave in an otherwise pretty red NJ. It’s just that way more people live in North Jersey. Ocean County is strong Trump country.
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It sounds like the state has changed a lot since I lived there! Just looking at this, the inclusion of Salem County is a surprise:
There was a significant Jewish population in Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester counties BITD. Salem was largely rural, but just as in the shore towns there was a big gap between wealthy home/landowners and the working class people who tended to be Democrats (see Cumberland County). It seems like the GOP is working hard to try to turn historically blue areas red:
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